The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age

Customer Reviews

As Head points out, the overall effect of the extension of these principles, especially combined with the vast electronic monitoring provided by recent advances in IT, is the overall dumbing-down of the worker, regardless of inherent or potential skills. The study of Toyota auto plants in Japan and other countries is particularly distressing, and one can easily see that it is only the influence of unions that has slowed down the treadmill. The situation with regard to call centers is appalling: truly the workers there are exploited ruthlessly. One wonders if in the offshoring of American jobs in the service sector, eventually the same massive turnover numbers will appear in developing countries.

Head, in my opinion, saves the best till last-managed care organizations. Here, as one reads both figures rarely published, research findings, and case studies, it becomes all too obvious that MCOs are an absolute disaster. Why are health care costs going up? It's all here in simple terms. Just this section of the book is worth reading alone if one is worried about health care in America.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Resource Management) and a host of other business areas literally reorganized by giant software programs (SAP R/3, for example), are also discussed, and viewed as boondoggles that rarely achieve any desired goals.

The overall trends discussed in this well-written book should frighten both management and employees, and it is unfortunate that the latter so often buy into the consultants' ill-advised mantras.

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